


"Dean. The Blade."

by doctor_jones



Category: Supernatural
Genre: broken!dean, comforting!cas, post-10x14, spoilers through 10x14
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-19
Updated: 2015-02-19
Packaged: 2018-03-13 17:01:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3389423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doctor_jones/pseuds/doctor_jones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An interpretation of the First Blade scene from 10x14, with a brief coda. Dean has lost his sense of self to the First Blade.</p>
            </blockquote>





	"Dean. The Blade."

_We talked about this._

Dean lurched down the wooden stairs. Every footfall was a shock to his bones, and the sound of each step was a gunshot. He strained to keep his movements slow, muscles twitching.

_Get ready. Do it. Uncurl one finger._

"Dean." Sam took a half-step forward, and Dean's grip tightened on the leather handle.

_Shit._

"Dean. The blade." 

_Crowley,_  his brain hissed.  _Crowley._ Dean was boiling inside. He staggered, unsteady, a puppet with burning strings.

_Do it._

Dean looked at his arm, willing it to rise.

_DO IT._

His fingers turned the blade over, handle out.

_Fuck you. Do it._

His arm tipped away from him, the handle falling in front of Castiel.

As Cas drew the blade from Dean's fingers, the last marionette string burned away and Dean sagged. He wanted to strangle Cas, sink his fingers into the angel's eye sockets and shred the flesh from his face. Dean wanted to tear Cas' arm off and take back the blade. But this was no fairy tale, and puppets without strings - well, they're just so much firewood.

************

That night, Dean sobbed. The broken pieces inside him bled out through his skin and fled his mouth in ragged sounds. He looked at his hands, twisted in the covers of his bed, and wondered that he could be so ruined inside and not shatter. He couldn't find  _Dean_  inside himself anymore. There was only the Mark, and the bloody, battered instincts that fought it.

Two taps on the door heralded Cas' arrival, a heavy crease between his brows. "Dean, are you alright? I thought I heard-"

Castiel stopped, a step inside the doorway, words dead on his lips. His eyes traced the curve of Dean's back as he hunched on the bed; followed the whorls in the bedspread into Dean's fists and up the knotted muscles in his arms. He stepped forward, slowly, but without hesitation, and gently laid a hand to the hunter's swollen, tear-streaked face.

"Dean."

In the sound of that word, Dean could hear the echo of who he used to be, and in this devastated moment, it was enough. His hand reached up and snatched Castiel's shirt, yanking him to a seat on the bed. Dean pressed his face to the curve of Castiel's neck and clung to him like a drowning man, his body shaking with sobs. Cas pressed Dean's head to his shoulder with one hand, and rubbed circles into his back with the other. They sat that way, not speaking, for a long time.


End file.
